At Homecare Essentials, we too are doing our bit to celebrate all things of the fairer sex. With that in mind, I would like to highlight some of the pioneering and ground breaking Women you may not be aware of.
Valentina Tereshkova – The first Woman in Space. In 1963 became the fifth person to leave our atmosphere and orbit The Earth.
Elizabeth Blackwell – Graduated medical school in 1849 to become the first female doctor in the USA and the first on the UK Medical Register, as well as a pioneer in educating women in medicine.
Charlotte Cooper – Five times Wimbledon singles champion and the first female to win an Olympic Gold Medal (for tennis) in 1900.
Marie Curie – Chemist and physicist, she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903, for her work on radiation.
Edith Wharton – The first woman to be awarded the distinguished Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence.
Amelia Earhart – The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in an airplane, making her voyage in 1928.
Jacqueline Cochran – The first woman to break the sound barrier in flight on May 18, 1953.
Octavia Hill – best known for co-founding the National Trust, but she was also a tireless campaigner on issues ranging from the importance of education to the protection of green spaces in and around London. She was particularly concerned with the welfare of people in cities and was a driving force behind the creation of social housing, setting up the first ever housing association.
Many of the footsteps of history were made by women and largely go unnoticed. I leave you with a quote from one of the 20th centuries most famous women.
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples”
Mother Teresa.